On Charles Burns' 'Black Hole' and the Medium of Comics

Comics, like cinema, is an eminently modern medium. And as with cinema, looking closely at it can swiftly acquaint us with the profound weirdness of modernity. Do that in the context of a discussion on Charles Burns' comic masterpiece Black Hole, and you're guaranteed a memorable Weird Studies episode. Black Hole was serialized over ten years beginning in 1995, and first released as a single volume by Pantheon Books in 2005. Like all masterpieces, it shines both inside and out: it tells a captivating story, a "weirding" of the teenage romance genre, while also revealing something of the inner workings of comics as such. In this episode, Phil and JF explore the singular wonders of a medium that, thanks to artists like Burns, has rightfully ascended from the trash stratum to the coveted empyrean of artistic respectability—without losing its edge.

BIG NEWS:

• If you're planning to be in Bloomington, Indiana on October 9th, 2024, click here to purchase tickets to IU Cinema's screening of John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness, featuring a live Weird Studies recording with JF and Phil.

• Go to Weirdosphere to sign up for Matt Cardin's upcoming course, MC101: Writing at the Wellspring, starting on 22 October 2024.

• Visit https://www.shannontaggart.com/events and follow the links to learn more about Shannon's (online) Fall Symposium at the Last Tuesday Society. Featured speakers include Steven Intermill & Toni Rotonda, Shannon Taggart, JF Martel, Charles and Penelope Emmons, Doug Skinner, Michael W. Homer, Maria Molteni, and Emily Hauver.

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REFERENCES

Charles Burns, Black Hole
Clement Greenberg’s concept of “medium specificity”
Terry Gilliam (dir.), The Fisher King
Seth, comic artist
Chris Ware, Building Stories
“Graphic Novel Forms Today” in Critical Inquiry
Raymond Knapp, The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity
Vilhelm Hammershoi, Danish painter
Ramsey Dukes, Words Made Flesh
G. Spencer-Brown,